So, after about 4 hours of playing, I’ve completed the main game plus some minor extra stuff. Yes, the game is that short. Even then, I watched all the cutscenes and stuff, which there are a lot of for some reason. I was overall just expecting Sonic Generations 2 from the trailers, but no, that is not what this game is at all. At times, it doesn’t even really feel like a Sonic game, but does that make it a bad game?

So, let’s start with the main “selling point” of the game, the custom character. This is probably the coolest thing about the game overall and can change the game a lot. Just selecting what type of animal you want to be changes stuff, for example, birds can double jump. Because of this though, the different abilities aren’t well used. Not even in the stages were your character is supposed to be used. You also never give your character a name, which I found odd. The thing that bothered me the most though about your custom character is that you can’t boost or even spindash. I mean, why not? Not having that just makes some platforming more difficult. I also found it very annoying that your character never talks and when people talk to your character, it’s just like only they can hear what you are saying. Just simple lines like “hi” and “thanks” wouldn’t hurt, specially not since you only get 3 different voices to choose from per gender.

There are also a lot of other things that just makes this game not feel like a Sonic game at all. Firstly, the story goes way deeper than it needs to, specially considering how bad it is overall. There are so many cutscenes and dialog, but it just seems like that’s there to make the game feel like it’s longer than what it really is. It doesn’t help that most stages are around 2 minutes or less, making the cutscenes feel even longer. The cutscenes also constantly switch between being pre-rendered and being rendered in-engine. This just makes it look weird, especially on higher resolution monitors. I guess this was made due to cutscenes having to be rendered in-engine when your custom character is in them, but why not just render them all in-engine in that case?

There are also a lot of other things that just makes this not feel like a Sonic game. There are for example no real zones anymore. Well, there are “areas”, but you jump between them all the time, so there are no acts, just one big set of levels to play.
There are also quick time events now, which I guess sort of fits. Kind of reminds me of the tricks you could do after going off a ramp in like Sonic Generations, which aren’t here.
In some stages, you also control 2 characters, Sonic and your own, using the abilities of both characters. So basically, your own character with boost, like it should be. This kind of reminds me of Sonic Heroes, though, the character switches automatically instead of you having to do anything, so it mostly just reminds me how awkward it is to play as your own character.

Lastly, there’s this weird medal system. After you complete a stage, your medal goes up in rank. What this does, I have no idea. It’s never explained in the game and my only guess is that the higher it goes, the more cosmetics you unlock, but I honestly have no idea. Seems like some sort of level system, but why that was even considered being added, I don’t know.

The controls are overall fine. Don’t know how they managed me make them feel worse than before, but somehow, they did. When you’re running straight forward for example, just slightly moving the joystick in makes your character fly off in that direction. Really makes it hard to try going specific paths, which is specially needed if you want to collect the red rings.

They also managed to make the homing attack very unreliable. Almost half of the time I had a circle around an enemy and tried to do a homing attack, I would just fall to my doom instead of attacking the enemy. I’ve never had this issue before in any other Sonic game, so why here?
The wall jumping is also very unreliable. Most of the time, I just drag my face across the wall instead of grabbing onto it. Eventually I grab to the wall, not really knowing what I did differently. Most of the time there are places you’re supposed to wall jump, the camera angles get so weird that I don’t see when I jump off and often jump way longer and fall instead.

This is honestly what disappointed me the most. The soundtrack overall is just average at best, with a few tracks standing out, like most of the classic Sonic stages, which has a nice 16-bit style to them. Too bad there aren’t a lot of those. The modern Sonic stages are now just filled with dubstep and lyrics, which just sounds out of place for a Sonic game. After playing the game, I can’t really remember any of the songs and don’t feel like listening to them outside of the game, like I would with most other Sonic games.

They finally figured out how to make a good PC port. Everything you would ever want in a port is here, good graphics options, unlocked framerate, everything. There are some odd things though, like “AA” and “AF” with no description what they mean, just assuming the user knows exactly what they are. Other than that though, I have no complaints here.

It might sound like I was negative about this game, but overall, I had a good time. It wasn’t what I expected or as good as I hoped, and I probably won’t come back to it for another playthrough or to try and complete it 100%, but I don’t feel like my money or time was wasted either.

I would give this game a 6/10